Wikimedia Meta-Wiki

Grants:PEG/Africa Centre/Wiki Loves Africa 2015

< Grants:PEG


statusFunded
Africa Centre/Wiki Loves Africa 2015
m:Wiki Loves Africa (WLAf) is an annual contest where people across Africa can contribute media (photographs, video and audio) about their environment on Wikimedia Commons for use on Wikipedia and other project websites of the Wikimedia Foundation.
targetWikimedia Commons, Wikipedia, Wikitravel, Wikibooks. Primarily English, French, Arabic and African languages.
strategic priorityBy order of importance from a goal perspective Increasing Reach (most important), Increasing Participation, and Improving Quality (least important)
start dateAugust 1 September
start year2015
end dateJune 31 March
end year2016
budget (USD)24,400 USD 22,760 USD
grant typeorganisation
non-profit statusYes
contact(s)• islahf(_AT_)africacentre.net• fdevouard(_AT_)kumusha.org and islahf(_AT_)africacentre.net
organization• Africa Centre (WikiAfrica Project)
endorse


Goal

edit

m:Wiki Loves Africa (WLAf) is an annual contest where people across Africa can contribute media (photographs, video and audio) about their environment on Wikimedia Commons for use on Wikipedia and other project websites of the Wikimedia Foundation. Wiki Loves Africa particularly encourages participants to contribute media that illustrate a specific theme for that year. Each year the theme changes and could include any such universal, visually rich and culturally specific topics (for example, markets, rites of passage, festivals, public art, cuisine, natural history, urbanity, daily life, notable persons, etc).
The project is a two-month competition which will start on the 1st October and end on the 30th November.
The project will be run at the entire continental level. However, some specific actions (training, communication etc.) will be held in some countries with national organisers.
The project will feature a contest to select the best media at the continental level, with prizes as deemed appropriate.
The aim of the Wiki Loves Africa project is to provide support for national organisers, and organise the continental layer of WLA. The framework that will be developed could serve as a template for future editions of the WLA, thus expanding the value of the project well beyond its actual lifespan.

The theme for the 2014 photo contest was Wiki Loves Africa Cuisine. The theme for the 2015 photo contest has been chosen as Wiki Loves Africa 2015: Cultural Fashion and Adornment. The theme for 2015 was chosen after 1 month of open nominations for themes, and one month of voting on the nominated themes.

Wiki Loves Africa 2015 : Cultural Fashion and Adornment

The competition scope will be: Submissions of media that feature cultural dress and fashion; specifically fashion that is defined by local cultural influences and determines cloth, styles, ways of wrapping and hanging, etc. This theme would include adornment, that includes culturally defined jewellery, make-up, hairstyles, draped cloths and woven materials.

View the grant request for WIki Loves Africa 2014 here. View the report here.

Plan

edit

Activities

edit

The project will be organised by a continental team who centralises the competition and assists and supports the country national teams, runs the continent-wide communications campaign, and will organise the continental prize and continental exhibition. The project will be based at WikiAfrica at the Africa Centre (South Africa), but will not be limited to this geographical space.

The local organising teams will be responsible for driving communications and social media around the competition. They will act as the spokespeople in their country, and will be encouraged to host upload and wiki-takes events during the competition period. They will be asked to suggest judges for the continental team.

The detail of specific activities listed below relate to the work done by the continental team.

Project management and administration

edit
  • Build/maintain the website infrastructure(s)
  • Setting out a clear timeline for the Wiki Loves Africa competition
  • Set up documentation of best practices (in particular with regards to licences and what constitutes a good photo)
  • Create communication systems for reports and evaluation metrics
  • Monitor statistics and competition entries
  • Track analytics of social media campaign
  • Evaluate the project and competition as a whole
Support to National Organisers
edit
  • Track the application of initiative to local context
  • Support national organisers
  • Share coordinated communications campaign and materials
  • Support and disseminate local social media and crowdfunding campaigns
  • Help to find a local solution for organisers to upload multimedia on behalf of others.
Budget and administration
edit
  • Build and operate financial structure and control
  • Full financial report and governance

Communication

edit
  • Create a strong and simple social media driven campaign to reach people internationally and locally
  • Prepare material such as leaflets, posters and press releases that can be used and/or built on by national organisations
  • Connect with press (continental, national and regional)
  • Identify major influencers (blogs, thought leaders, facebook / twitter leaders)
  • Maintain communication with international partners including relevant staff at Wikimedia Foundation
  • Build up database of press contacts for French speaking countries in particular

Competition and prizes

edit

Set up and rollout of the international contest

  • Implement communications campaign to national and continental press and stakeholders
  • Set up jury processes to select best images
  • Find suitable jury members for the continental jury
  • Support the jury in their process, maintain timeline
  • Dissemination of results
  • Provide and distribute prizes and awards to winners
  • Use a crowdfunding platform to ask people to contribute towards a continental prize

Countries of focus

edit

The contest will operate in all African countries. However, special attention and support will be offered by those countries that are keen to create events. These focus countries could include South Africa, Tunisia, Egypt, Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Morocco, Cameroon, Nigeria, Algeria, Uganda, and Malawi.

The team will naturally take into account lessons learned from Wiki Loves Africa 2014 (see commons:Commons:Wiki Loves Africa/Results and best practices).
Some of the directions of improvement (but not limited to) are taking steps to improve the general quality of the pictures. That might be by:

  • looking for partners for good photographic material to be gifted to user-groups
  • looking for more partnerships with photographic related professionals (this one might be tricky)
  • organizing locally photographic workshops (perhaps with the help of chapters who already did that)
  • making available some additional material for guidelines and recommendations

Or taking steps to improve the uploading experience locally. This might be done by:

  • looking for more partnerships to get access to proper uploading spots
  • more devices proposed to participants
  • more training sessions to Commons mass uploading tools
  • additional material pointing out to the importance of authorship attribution, file description, categories and licences, and helping to get that done well

And setting up a proper list of press contacts in French to increase the reach of our press releases

Impact

edit

Target readership

edit

Primarily Wikimedia Commons. As a side effect, Wikipedia, Wikitravel and Wikibooks are the most likely to be impacted. Languages impacted are primarily English, French and Arabic. We also hope that an indirect benefit would come to African languages as well.

Fit with strategy

edit

What crucial thing will the project try to change or benefit in the Wikimedia movement? Please select the Wikimedia strategic priority(ies) that your project most directly aims to impact and explain how your project fits. Most projects fit all strategic priorities. However, we would like project managers to focus their efforts on impacting 1–2 strategic priorities. Examples of strategic priorities can be found here.

Wiki Loves Africa's goals, as presented above, specifically fit to the Wikimedia Foundation's strategy. Wiki Loves Africa is a contest that hopes to rebalance the amount of visual, contemporary coverage there is of Africa on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. As a contest that can be curated each year, the project will achieve the Foundation's following strategic goals by:

  • Increasing reach - the project not only uses an easy means of contribution (the mobile phone is king in Africa, and camera- wielding smartphones sales are increasing yearly), it is designed to grow each year, and by offering different themes per contest, will consistently introduce Wikipedia to new interest groups.
  • Increasing participation - the contest will break through the barriers that currently prevent people in Africa from contributing to Wikimedia projects. It will heighten awareness of the educational value, and drive home the concept that Wikipedia is not just something to passively consume provided by the "west", but that it is locally relevant, and can reflect local reality if local people contribute.

Although the focus is on the first two priorities, ultimately the project will also improve quality. The visual information that currently exists on Africa on Wikipedia is a thin veneer of what is happening (and has happened) on the ground in every country. The project hopes to visually harness some of that rich diversity to add to the understanding of subjects that relate to the continent of Africa.

This project support the key organisational objectives of the Wikimedia Foundation in:

  • driving awareness in African countries of Wikipedia as a resource,
  • creating a galvanising event around which active Wikipedians can work together in each country
  • lowering barriers for contribution by ordinary people across Africa,
  • providing guidelines to ensure quality submissions,
  • reaching out to professional photographers to ensure quality photos are submitted,
  • by encouraging local people to contribute, this engenders more trust in our projects by people in developing countries suspicious of "Western" influence,
  • creating sustainable processes from the beginning to ensure longevity of this project
  • providing a large amount of previously unavailable high-quality culturally specific material on a universal practice
  • by ensuring that all material relating to each theme encompasses all aspects of the theme, the material from places across the continent will display and illustrate very specific and subtle differences across Africa

In addition, the project enables the natural extension of the WikiAfrica model, which uses different tactics to develop sustainable awareness, contribution and support for Wikimedia on the continent. The WikiAfrica project's aims are inherent to the Wikipedian model, as based on partnership-building, volunteer-based local community building, and network-forming. This contest finds a popular and sustainable way to further those aims.

Measures of success

edit

Please provide a list of both quantitative and qualitative criteria that will be used to determine how successful the project is. You will need to report on the success of the project according to these measures after the project is completed. See the PEG program resources for suggested measures of success.

Preliminary notes
The contest will welcome media from all African countries (and relevant media from outside Africa). Photographs, videos and audio representations from all over Africa may be nominated for the contest.

Countries in which a local organising team has been specifically set up are identified as CNOs for grant purpose. Only countries where the organising team has been officially recognised by the continental committee will be considered CNOs.

Measures of success for the Wiki Loves Africa Competition

  • Aim for an average of 750 media files uploaded to the contest by each CNO (this level of contribution is expected to be an average of all the contributing countries)
  • Minimum of 8,000 media uploaded from across the continent
  • Minimum of 400 uploaders from across the continent
  • Minimum of 7 countries to join the contest as CNOs
  • A minimum of 8 events focused on content integration
  • 9 months after the contest has ended, at least 25 new users become active contributors (5 edits per month in any of the Wikimedia projects)
  • reuse on Wikimedia projects of at least 8%

Measures of success for the Continental team

  • A grant request is accepted successfully, and a report is produced according to the request
  • A survey is executed among local organisers, showing high levels of satisfaction with the continental team (average of ~4 on a five-point Lickert scale)
  • A list of improvements is proposed for the following year
  • The African finale is successfully completed.
  • The prizes are handed out before May 2016, with a possible exception for travel-related prizes.
  • Documentation is available for all those organising a local Wiki Loves Africa contest.

Resources and risks

edit

Resources

edit

Project lead username or email

  • User:Islahaddow Isla Haddow-Flood - Isla wikiafrica · net
  • user:anthere Florence Devouard - fdevouard anthere · net
  • other people tbd

Local organisers

  • tbd once call has gone out

Additional resources that will benefit the project and ensure its initial success is that it:

  • Will be operated by WikiAfrica at the Africa Centre which has a history of supporting Wikimedia through its projects, Wiki Loves Africa 2014, Kumusha Takes Wiki, Share Your Knowledge, OpenAfrica Toolkits, and Kumusha Bus.
  • With the project based at the Africa Centre, it can take advantage of an established track record in managing grants and partnerships with international donors and partners.
  • Already has buy in from “tbd” country-based Wikipedians that are already ready to begin the process. These Wikipedians are detailed above.
  • The project has already been run before, in 2014.
  • The co-project lead has been involved in the successful execution of Wiki Loves Monuments in South Africa in 2012 and 2013 as well as Wiki Loves Africa 2014 (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Africa_Centre/Wiki_Loves_Africa_2014)

Risks

edit
Risk Possible negative results Mitigation
Part 1: Internal
Remote project management (PM) team based in South Africa and France
  • Less personal contact with volunteer groups or external parties.
  • Lower participation grade of the project team.
  • Bad organisation and inability to be on top of things as a result.
  • Have experience of working together
  • Daily skype contact
  • Organise access to professional collaboration tools (eg. Web-Ex).
  • Discuss issue with WMF.
Actions distant from management team
  • Lower delivery quality of the action
  • Succumb to distraction and other opportunities.
  • Badly planned and minimal interventions as a result.
  • Second iteration of the project, expect to learn from previous challenges
  • Clear deliverables
  • Clear processes
  • Clear tracking and reporting protocols for events
  • Bi-weekly skype meetings and emailed updates
Flawed accounting by project actions
  • Misuse of allocated funds
  • Establish clear administrative guidelines.
  • Expenses only paid on proof of official invoice or out-of-pocket expenses.
  • Receipts to be collated and recorded in dropbox or google doc folders
  • Africa Centre accounting processes proven and experienced in cross-continental transfers
Over- or under-utilisation of the budget
  • Unexpected costs
  • Underestimate the work necessary for the volunteer groups to manage their side of the budget
  • Experience in budget and project requirements from three remote projects expected to assist in anticipating problems
  • Ask for and assess volunteer group event budgets before releasing money
  • Communicate limitations and expectations clearly
  • Regional or country-specific amounts are expected to average out
  • Discuss with WMF
Part 2: External
Socio political resistance to the project
  • Project participants and volunteers or volunteer groups threatened;
  • Second iteration, themes chosen by the communities
  • Motivation for each theme has included a discussion around possible  risks and challenges
  • In such cases, lower the level of noise around the project; get departmental or celebrity buy-in.
Environment around open access or media unsafe or insecure
  • Volunteer groups threatened;
  • Project stalled or in jeopardy;
  • Project draws negative attention
  • Watch for early warning signs
  • Devise alternative course of action including working with country diaspora or external branches of the country partners (content and network)
Being able to find or activate enough volunteers for Wikimedia activity in each country
  • limited contributions from each country
  • weak or poor reach of local volunteer groups
  • Reach out to aligned open organisations, subject interested networks, and groups interested in photography
  • Access organisations and individuals through each country’s diaspora
Problems with connectivity and electrical supply
  • inability to host events to drive contribution or upload media
  • inability to report on activities or update information in time
  • Consult local volunteer editor groups prior to operation on specific challenges
  • Provide quick fix, simple communications solutions specific to local problem
  • Provide off-line training tools and processes
  • Provide protocol for delivery of material to connected sites for batch upload.
Wild exchange rate fluctuations in currency
  • Money in at one rate not possible to cover budget out at another
  • From experience, Africa Centre has put in place a foreign currency account to mitigate against currency fluctuations and ensure that budgets are met as close to expectation as possible.
  • In extreme or unavoidable cases, discussion with WMF will be required.

Budget

edit

Please provide a detailed breakdown of project expenses according to the instructions here. See Budget Guidelines.

Grantees are subject to line-item scrutiny of expenses. Changes to the approved budget beyond 10% in any category must be approved in advance.

Project budget table
Number Category Item description Unit Number of units Unit price Currency Budget 2015 Comment
1 Project Staffing Co-project manager - FR months 5 1,500.00 USD 7500
1 Project Staffing Co-project manager - ENG months 5 900.00 USD 4500 Part of Isla salary not covered by Africa Center
1 Project Staffing Technical and administrative support months USD 0 Costs went down as the website has already been set up.
1 Project Staffing Administrative and financial management support months 5 411.00 USD 0 This is covered by the Africa Centre
2 Communication Design, Identity and Communication per item 1 1,200.00 USD 1200 Logo and general visual identity already done.
2 Communication In-country communication and materials per country 8 10 120.00 USD 960 1200 Compared to last year, part of the communication budget has been moved to events
3 Events Meetup, edit-a-thon, activations, workshops or upload sessions, Wiki Takes and photo hunt events per country 8 10 700.00 USD 5600 7000 Part of the communication budget has been moved here. The two event line-items from last year have been consolidated into one lump figure.
4 Prizes Continental prizes x 4 (photo-related vouchers, photo safari, devices, etc.) general cost 2,000.00 USD 0 Crowdfunding, sponsorship or other sources
4 Prizes Prize winners printed general cost 200.00 USD 0 Crowdfunding, sponsorship or other sources
4 Prizes Postage of prizes per item 4 125.00 USD 500 Now included from experience of actual costs
5 Judges / Sponsors Thank you goodies and postage general cost 500.00 USD 500 We did not spend all budget last year on this line, so decreased it accordingly
6 Additional elements Contingency general cost 2,000.00 USD 2000
Subtotals
1 Project Staffing 12000
2 Communication 2160 2400
3 Events 5600 7000
4 Prizes 500
5 Judges / Sponsors 500
6 Additional elements 2000
Total 22760 24400
Total cost of project
35950 USD
Total amount requested from the Project and Event Grants program
24400 USD 22,760 USD
Additional sources of revenue that may fund part of this project, and amounts funded

Part of the operational aspect of this project is funded by utilising existing resources at the Africa Centre. Additional financing will be sourced via local crowdfunding campaigns and through finding a national sponsor for the main prize.

Non-financial requirements

edit

See a description of non-financial assistance available. Please inform the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) of any requests for non-financial assistance now.

Requests for non-financial assistance, if any
  • We might need support in getting trademark agreements in place for local organisers where appropriate
  • There will be a need to use the CentralNotice in all African countries as well as in France (provided that there is no fundraising campaign ongoing) and potentially, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and the UK to access the diaspora in those countries - this will be discussed through the regular channels
  • Will need technical assistance for correct tagging with the upload wizard
  • Some assistance with statistics for reporting would be brilliant
  • Visibility on WMF communication channels (eg, WMF blog etc.)

Discussion

edit

Community notification

edit

You are responsible for notifying relevant communities of your proposal, so that they can help you! Depending on your project, notification may be most appropriate on a village pump, talk page, mailing list. Please paste a link below to where the relevant communities have been notified of this proposal, and to any other relevant community discussions. Need notification tips?

  • Email sent out to the African Wikimedians list
  • Information twitted and facebooked

Endorsements

edit

Do you think this project should be selected for a Project and Event Grant? Please add your name and rationale for endorsing this project in the list below. Other feedback, questions or concerns from community members are also highly valued, but please post them on the talk page of this proposal.

Côte d'Ivoire
  1. Donatien Kangah - Wikimedia Community User Group Côte d'Ivoire
  2. Eben-Ezer Guébo Dja - Wikimedia Community User Group Côte d'Ivoire
  3. There has to be a remake of Wlaf. 2014 edition was a real success in my humble opinion. There was an enthusiastic reaction from african Wikimedians in their respective country. Several events related to were carried out during the Wiki Loves Africa period such as photo hunting, upload and training sessions, not to mention the number of photos uploaded and the impact on local press in Côte d'Ivoire for example. African Hope (talk) - Wikimedia Community User Group Côte d'Ivoire
  4. Yao Colette - Wikimedia Community User Group Côte d'Ivoire
  5. JOHNSON Emmanuelle - Wikimedia Community User Group Côte d'Ivoire
  6. Stéphane Kra - Wikimedia Community User Group Côte d'Ivoire
  7. Yedidia Maureen - Wikimedia Community User Group Côte d'Ivoire
  8. Médy Rach - Wikimedia Community User Group Côte d'Ivoire
  9. Emmanuel Dabo - Wikimedia Community User Group Côte d'Ivoire
  10. Eltia Aimée - Wikimedia Community User Group Côte d'Ivoire
Tunisia
  1. --Touzrimounir (talk) 00:29, 26 June 2015 (UTC) Wikimedia TN User Group
Uganda
  1. Erina Mukuta - Wikimedia User Group Uganda
  2. Mulumba Ivan Matthias- Wikimedia User Group Uganda
Ghana
  • I fully support Wikiloves Africa. I partook last year and I enjoyed every bit plus it help me increase my uploads and edits too on commons Rberchie (talk) 17:16, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
  • It will promote African content on Wikipedia Celestinesucess (talk) 11:37, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
  • I support this project because most people love fashion and want to learn more about other people's culture as well Evemahmoud (talk) 11:47, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
  • I would like to render my support to this project.I also took part of it last year and I believe content from Africa should be put on the world stage.--Kwameghana (talk) 11:45, 28 June 2015 (UTC)
  • I participated in this campaign last year and i deem it a necessary project to gather information on the African continent. Flixtey (talk) 09:13, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
Cameroon
  1. Aminou Ndala Tita - Planning Wikimedia Cameroon
  2. Georges Fodouop
  3. Artista Poetica


Ethiopia
  • I have taken part in the previous Wiki Loves Africa and it was the first Wikimedia related activity that took place in Ethiopia and it has got a good response from the community.

I support the Wikiloves Africa project because it will magnify positive image about Africa and it's people. Abel Asrat (talk) 08:27, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Egypt
  1. -- --Mohamed Ouda (talk) 06:07, 8 July 2015 (UTC) Wikimedia EG User Group
Nigeria
  1. Kayusyussuf
  • I support WLA 2015 for a couple of reasons, chiefly because it will promote our culture and traditions firstly as African and secondly as Nigerians
  • I believe this project will bring about community engagement
  • It will help some of our local fashion designers and photographers become overnight champions when their works are uploaded to the wiki.I look forward to participating in this project.

2. Olaniyan Olushola My reasons for supporting this project are :

  • It will help to project library of Nigerian articles and fashiion to the global community
  • Its a way of enriching collection of photograph in wikipedia
  • Its also serve locally to envangelise WIKI works in Nigeria
  • It will promote community engagement.

Base on the above mentioned reasons i hereby endorsed WIKI LOVES AFRICA 2015.

3. Wikicology

  • I believe this will create an awareness that wikipedia can be written by anyone.
  • It will result in the contributions of high-quality images to Wikicommon
  • it will result in increase number of contributors from Africa.

4. talk

  • The need for high quality images about Africa on wikimedia projects can not be over-emphasized, I support this project.--Jamie Tubers (talk) 13:32, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

5. OluwaCurtis

  • I am supporting the WLA2015 because I think some people know less about Africa and her culture, I look forward in contributing to the success of this project and l hope it puts Africa on a wider map.


Algeria
For grantees

If you are the grantee or representative that wrote this grant submission, you may request changes by using these links:

Retrieved from "https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Grants:PEG/Africa_Centre/Wiki_Loves_Africa_2015&oldid=21620820"